Alexis and I were tucked in relatively safe amongst the throng of tired and injured summoners in the backlines mostly away from danger. The ground had remained blood and gore soaked, but rather than bodies piled up, there were injured being cared for either by potions and salves or by summons using healing abilities.

Healing type summons were rather rare and were being used sparingly for the worst cases. As long as a person wasn't dead, they could be fully healed later on, one good thing about this era is the surplus of miracle ingredients allowing a person to heal from just about anything.

The strongest of the summoner population within the city was up now facing against a plethora of tier 4 monsters and the occasional tier 5, luckily there had yet to be any strong tier 5's. However, we all knew the strongest monsters would be coming eventually, probably as soon as the tier 4's had been wiped out and severely weakened the summoners.

This is when everyone regardless of their current state would need to band together not only to survive attacks, but to bring down these behemoths that would do their best to not only wipe us out, but our families and neighbors as well.

We had a strong reason to fight to the last, and many of us had the mindset to do such a thing regardless of if it costs them their life or not. There were reparations for the family of any summoner who died during the monster break, and additional compensation would be given according to the merits recorded on their watch.

I wasn't looking to sacrifice myself, after all I had Mira to think of and she would be heart broken to discover my passing, I couldn't be sure she would ever recover as I Wass often the one taking care of her rather than the other way around. This was especially true of when we were in the orphanage and had no one to rely on with most adults not being able to care about so many orphans and their squabbles.

Those times were especially rough and I had to do things that not many my age would be willing or able to do. Most of those things involved protecting Mira and dissuading anyone from taking advantage of her, whether through the promise of threats or actual violence until they were no longer a threat.

Most backed off, but some wouldn't be turned away so quickly, after all girls as pretty and socially vulnerable as Mira were rare and many had given up their humanity long ago to survive and were no more than beasts. These events were a major reason for me mistrusting not only my peers, but authority figures as well as they weren't willing to help when we needed them and had to take care of our own welfare.

The children weren't even the worst, some of the adults took advantage of their position to try and get "benefits" from the orphans and especially the girls, but I'll save that story for another time.

Fighting continued as we regained our strength for the final haul before we can all rest and repair what had been destroyed this day. The smell of death and the tang of iron on our tongue remained pervasive, it was only slightly better in the back near the gate. We still had our summons ready for any stray attacks or projectiles, hopefully nothing would attack us but I wouldn't bet on it.

Around 20 minutes of resting later and we were finally in a state to watch the battle and talk. When we had originally sat down to rest we could barely even form a coherent sentence we were so mentally tired.

I turned around to get a better view of the battle in our area and asked, "So, is this your first monster break?"

Her, "No, although this is only my second. The last one didn't have as many monsters fighting, and I don't even know what monstrosities we are going to face before the day is over."

I didn't really find this info reassuring, but it only reconfirmed that I would need to become stronger to keep up with the monster breaks or get caught in the flood of seemingly endless monsters.

I decided that not only would I be focusing on the quality of my monsters, but I would also need a wide variety of different monsters to be truly effective. Jotun was a good start, but I still had glaring weak points in my lineup so far, not to mention having more monsters to evolve would increase my own personal ability to survive.

We didn't have a chance to converse any further as a booming stomp was heard from afar, and in a cloud of dust and dirt emerged a Manticore the size of a small house. It was obviously at the height of tier 5, and not only that, but it had a wicked looking scorpion tail extension that was the length of a school bus and dripped with ominous bright green looking venom.

It had the head and body of a tiger with stripes and all, and had what looked to be demon-like wings on its back. The wings were bony structures with red and dark-purple hued leather connecting it all together, and at the tip of each wing was a barb that I could only assume held some of the same venom I had seen before.

The weaker summons took a step back from the manticore and worked on culling the tier 4's near them to maintain the line. What stepped forward to meet the manticore was a freshly summoned monster from a summoner with a dark soul-patch and curly black hair, he had an imposing demeanor and seemed more than confident that the summon he had brought out could take it on.

The summon was a Titan with enormous muscles and an even larger hammer that it held within two hands. The titan stood above even the manticore and had stone-like grey skin that cracked and reformed with every step. It seemed like a good pairing, as the strong defense of the titan would help ward off being affected by the venom, and its' strong constitution could fight off the ominous liquid when it inevitably was introduced into the summon.

Its' hammer was almost as long as the gigantic summon, and was made from an odd white looking stone at the hammer portion, and was held together by a black metal with red veins running through that I recognized as adamantium. The handle was made from a vibrant looking piece of wood, and all of the unique parts formed together seamlessly into a powerful and intimidating two-handed hammer that seemed like it could crush the world.

Each opponent readied themselves after identifying their foe, and began to charge furiously towards each other. After a few strides from each, with any unfortunate monster between them getting crushed underfoot, they met in a loud clash of body meeting body.

The manticore had jumped and positioned its' front claws to pierce the chest of the giant humanoid, this didn't quite work out as the titan ducked unexpectedly and me the monster with a football shoulder charge. The monster was the losing in the first confrontation and lost ground all the while being disoriented from being thrown back onto the ground. The titan didn't let up as it regained momentum and looked to be setting up for a hammer strike.

The battling monster and summon were so large that no one had any trouble witnessing the fight, we could even feel the wind being blown back from the concussive force of the initial confrontation. When the hammer was brought down on the lion-like amalgamation of parts which had just regained its' footing, there was a loud smack and cracking sounds heard from each opponent.

The titan had crushed the tail that had been brought up to ward off the summon, but on the flip-side, before the appendage was destroyed the stinger had managed to surprisingly pierce through the forearm of the titan before being ripped away from the force of the blow.

The chitinous stinger of death was actually directed right towards the back of the summoner line towards us. If there was nothing done to deflect or slow down the stinger, it may very well crush some of us that couldn't move in time.

Seeing the injured around me, I came up with an idea and promptly summoned Jotun. With him sensing my thoughts of intercepting something and seeing a black worm-like object heading right for us, he reared back and charged up an extra-large ice ball the size of a boulder and with all of the force he could muster he launched the ice right at the incoming appendage of doom. Luckily for us, the ice had managed to make contact and put a stop to all of the momentum of the tail, it hit right before us and luckily most had managed to move out of the way in time.

When the tail made contact only one person remained underneath, they had had both legs amputated and were in no position to move, luckily his end was quick and there likely was no pain from the incident which is about as much as you can ask for in this situation. Feeling a tinge of sadness from the loss that I had inadvertently caused, I run towards the stinger in the hopes of storing it before another can get to it.

Jotun was left behind recovering from the massive in comparison to size ice ball, Jareth and I made it in time before others got brave enough to try and vie for the severed tail. I had intercepted the limb and so no one disputed my claim to it when I stored it, otherwise they would have been clambering to benefit from this unexpected prize.

What was going on when I was distracted by my potentially impending doom and then securing of my prize was each monster yelling out in agony as each had taken a rather severe blow. The manticore had lost its' greatest weapon as well as limb, and the titan was injected with venom and was already beginning to show signs of decay in the arm attacked.

In a surprising display of willpower each took care of their own injury to prevent them from weakening them further. The manticore breathed out a blue flame at its' tail to cauterize the wound and prevent further bleeding, and the titan had it even worse as he ripped a strip of cloth from his shirt and made a tourniquet for the left arm already injected with the highly corrosive venom.

Once the forearm was secured he brought out a proportional bronze dagger secured to his back, presumably for emergencies, and sliced the forearm right off. Both of these wounds could be healed later on, but currently each was a crippling wound that would severely lessen their fighting potential.

It was likely neither would be able to fight another opponent after this fight, but they didn't seem to care as they continued to charge at each other with malice spewing from their glaring eyes. It was personal to these two and each seemed determined to stomp their opponent. With another clash imminent, everyone watched and prepared for any unexpected projectiles or attacks like last time.

The manticore spewed those deceivingly calm looking blue flames, and the titan wound up with its' one arm to hammer the beast to death. Each bellowed out before fully unleashing their attacks.

The titan used his severed arm to block the flames while swinging the hammer with all his might and bashing in the skull of the monster and subsequently stopping any further flames. The titan may have won, but his stump was now charcoal and he was barely standing at this point.

The summoner ran over to check on his titan and handing it a vase-sized potion of a red liquid, the titan immediately gulped down the potion and began growing out a new limb slowly as if it was magic. The summoner unsummoned the titan to allow it to rest after ensuring there were no more life-threatening wounds and instead summoned out a glaringly-white pegasus.

He hopped on the winged horse summon and went over to the chimera, he dug out the core from the chest and then unsurprisingly bonded with the monster. The summoner did what most people would do and bonded with the fully matured and monstrously strong chimera, he would gain no strengthening from the chimera since it was fully evolved, but the promise of an already strong summon was often more than worth it.

The corpse disappeared into the chimera and the summoner palmed the core before heading back to the front lines to continue fighting. Luckily I had already stored the stinger into my storage face, otherwise it would have disappeared with the rest of the body.

Most of the body needs to be present for the bond to form with the dead monster, but a small piece or two being stored was fine, it would just take longer to reanimate and gain strength.

The battle continued on with the occasional appearance of a tier 5 monster fighting against a summon brought out to counter the monster. So far an hour had already passed and there was only an hour left till the monster break ended, but this is the most dangerous time as this is when the strongest monsters would come out en masse to try and break through the gate.

They slowly started showing up more and more, but luckily the strongest summoners at the front currently were enough to take care of the monsters, but they were beginning to lag behind and weakening. By the time another 30 minutes had gone by, more and more summoners were beginning to be dragged in to fight off these true behemoths.

Alexis and I strolled up as well and directed both Jotun and Holly to shoot projectiles at weak points while remaining safe within the lines. They weren't strong enough to face off against the terrors facing us currently, but every bit counted and even the smallest bit of damage would add up.

What was in front of us was a red dragon spewing fire every which way, and facing agains the beast was a perfectly suited summon, it was a fire-Ifrit that controlled all fire absolutely.

Any fire spewed would be blocked or used against it, the dragon learned soon enough as a breathe charging up was forced into the inside of the dragon by the Ifrit, damaging important organs and severely weakening the dragon.

The only thing allowing the beast to remain standing was its' extremely resistant hide, but even that was accumulating damage, and weaker summons were targeting the eyes and mouth to damage it. A group of harpies, Holly included, fired off their knife-like feathers at the dragon's eyes, forcing it to keep them shut to protect them.

The dragon let its' guard drop and opened its eyelid slowly to check for enemies, but this allowed for a few feathers to sneak through and pierce the eye, blinding the dragon in that eye. It wasn't long after that the dragon was finally brought down by the exhausted Ifrit along with the cumulative damage of weaker summon's attacks.

These mini battles continued on with everyone doing what they could to stop those elite monsters, all the while having to slowly give up ground to remain out of range. Jotun had used his ice attack as much ass he could until there was no more frost coming from his mouth, and other summons around us with ranged attacks were in similar situations.

I had remained by Alexis this entire time and so far we had saved each other on a few occasions from stray attacks sent out by these beasts, one such instance alerted me to the fact that she could sprout wings and fly for a short amount of time. Obviously this ability originated from the evolution of Holly into a harpy from what she told me was originally a silent-feathered owl that could shoot her feathers like bullets while remaining completely silent.

Time continued to pass with more and more falling victim to the area of effect attacks, it was horrible to see groups burst into flame or be crushed by a thrown boulder, all the while thinking about how glad you were that it wasn't you this time.

I'll definitely never forget some of the horrible and haunting things I had witnessed during this event, but I also had a new appreciation for life and the strength of humanity when they work together against a common enemy. I think this even showed a glimpse of what the deity was saying when he gave us a common enemy in monsters for us to band together against.

By the end when the final monster was slain, we crowed out in joy and anguish as our fight was finally over. I crushed Alexis in a hug before the last of my strength left me and we rested on the ground for a while before gearing up for the sobering duty of cleaning up the battlefield and scavenging.

Alexis was too tired to complain, so we laid together on the ground surrounded by blood, dirt, fire, and bodies. Eventually, after a few minutes of silence, we and many other summoners recovered enough strength to begin going about the nasty business of cleaning up. It wasn't a pretty job, but it was necessary for our continued survival to use and recycle every material available.